Massimo Chiti
Each gesture has its own intentionality, a reading that recovers and merges elements of move in the history of art and in contemporary society.
Chiti’s semantic pact with reality lies precisely in this recovery action in which the study of matter in the artistic gesture plays with the techniques of composition.
Here the face Mao, in thew work of the sema, acquires a new strength, noy ideological- rather, anti-ideological, with the internet, in the act of this derivation, to “use” this visual material for what it is: an image, a de-contextualized face and reduced to matter.
The typical intent of the Pop environment of “picking up” that given symbol is fulfilled culture to do it with a language other than, private, as already said, of the original semantics, is attested to be the reason for the strength of the anti-ideological game and countercultural.
Mao, a historical figure, loses not the historicity, when, in fact, he is recognizable, but the original meaning; he is deprived of it to be material of the work of art, of work aesthetic of public exposure of this same recovery.
In another work, “it Seems Easy”, we see this case of advertising messages.
What does it recover? The sense of advertising, which resides in the elevation of the consumer goog to a passession goog, that is, in the narration of a industrial product as almost necessary for the construction of the indentity of the identity of the person and which acts on the overall structure of the dominant culture.
This landing, the widespread, mas meaning of the advertised object, is contrary to been by this attitude of desecration of the same imposed meaning that it is made right, purified.
The same industrial production attitude tha points to infinite series is broken down into theuniqueness tha is the work of art.
Chiti’s techniques are manifold, a sing of this historical, personal and cultural research.
Tural in which we find precise references, coordinates made very personal from the action of the artistic gesture for which the torn poster, the de’collage of Mimmo Rotella livesin scratches, tears and compositions, adding elements minds in matter.
A research on the essence of the work, on the making of art that it carries out at par tire from the personal transaltion of matter as the object of the artist’s action on sense above all of himself as the creator of the work and as human generator of gnified.
Thus, in the alteration of the materil, conceived and shaped on the need for research, we cannot help but think of Alberto Burri, of the tension inherent in manufacturing of the material that has its apex in the “Cretti” and in their cracks thas Chiti pays homage with the use of materials such as gypsum from Bologna, stuccos, cements and glues on raw jute canvases.
A meditation on the artistic expressiveness that markes this same research unique, testifies to another element typical of the composition of his works: the chia di colore, a sort of signature of one’sown compositional language.
So, Chiti does this, he makes a journy, even a spiritual one, in the history of art for to arrive at the artistic language itself throung the skilful recovery of the studio material as for the colors, so that even the cromatic level reflects the restessness research and becomes itself the body of matter, with ignitions and touches given with sense and form yes not close to the living reality, but coherent in everything with this research personal.
Giseppe Maria Marrone
Massimo Chiti, New Pop or Hypertextuality?
Massimo Chiti’s visual work focuses on a continuous reflection around the communicative languages shared in contemporary society. Massimo wants to talk to us and therefore, first of all, he appropriates a grammar and a syntax suitable for interfacing with the multitude of individuals with whom he relates daily. Massimo moves away from the condition of elitist intellectual and demiurge, holder of a higher awareness and committed to guiding his fellow men. With his work he redefines the role of the artist as the spokesperson and medium of a company, a critical voice, but nevertheless an interpreter of a shared feeling. And if the visual language, even more than speech and writing, is a priority in the global world of the 21st century, it is obvious that, among the infinite experiments delivered to us by the masters of Modernity, we are choosing those that are able to more widely speak with diversified layers of sociality . Massimo adopts many of the most recent artistic experiments, but chooses a language with clear references to the Pop experience, both in terms of techniques and subjects. Recognizing one’s fathers is instrumental in providing an approach, in facilitating an approach. But nothing more! Certainly Massimo focuses on faces and iconic figures apartments with the baggage shared by the middle western man, and on these he intervenes with the specific tools of the visual operator, as Warhol had already experimented. But the analogies end there. It is no longer sufficient to denounce the mystical aspect of the consumer society, with globalization we need more subtle analysis tools and more complex deconstructive and reconstructive hypotheses.
If Warhol combines screen printing and photography to offer us a technically “easy” way of producing and reproducing images, if Mimmo Rotella, with his “décollage” tries to affirm traces of a past, Massimo builds, with his mastery of techniques and materials of the contemporaneity, complex concept maps to guide reflection and suggest further critical paths.
In his works collages and décollage are combined with manipulations in the printing phase and pictorial interventions that reproduce the classical instruments of composition and chromatic balance; nothing is ready-made, torn from the banality of everyday life: even when it recycles bottle caps, it manipulates them, transforming them into mosaic tiles, caps, strasses and fragments of crystals that lead to combine painting, but only to reinforce the expressive energy of the combinations of images . We immediately recognize the face of David Bowie or Sophia Loren, but it is the indistinct magma of iconographic fragments that make up (or break down?) These mythical images to trigger a short circuit that multiplies the associations and the calls. Various echoes intersect and make the nature of the image even more polymorphic, figures and objects, together and fragments, lose their original matrix and acquire another identity. The impalpable lightness of the printed papers and colors gives way (or is combined) to the physicality of materials borrowed from different fields (the bottle cap, the strasse, the crystal), not so much to conquer a spatial plasticity, as for building a dialectic between reality, appearance and illusion. Resin treatment also crystallizes the process, eliminating any possible future depletion. We witness the reversal of the process that Rotella proposed to us and we understand the specificities of Chiti: we do not just extrapolate fragments full of pathos from life, but we patiently build a network of associations of ideas (for images) capable of reinterpreting reality and to suggest further enrichments and transformations.
A way to reflect on the precariousness and fragility of the human being and of all things, in a continuous flow where even the opposites dissolve into each other. The shapes, apparently recognizable as shared icons, break and recompose, tear and reconstruct temporary balances and create new, polymorphic, unusual and unexpected ones, while the grin transforms into a smile, suffering into joy, seriousness at stake winking. memory is always stronger than retinal perception and the latter serves to activate the former. And then we could be drawn to the popular myths that Massimo Chiti offers us but then look at his works as meditation tables where to look for oxymorons and palindromes to build further sense connections of looking at his works as meditation tables where to look for oxymorons and palindromes to build further entirely personal sense connections.
Roberto Agnoletti